Blows and jail

Published on
May 16, 2020

A phone call from an “outside woman” resulted in a 35-year-old man getting “put out” in the dead of night.

And Corey Omar Nicholls, of Yearwood Road, Sugar Hill, St Joseph said all that could have been avoided if he had only remembered to turn off his phone.

But the circumstances of that night was what landed him before Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes in the District ‘D’ Magistrates’ Court charged with beaching the Covid-19 curfew. Nicholls admitted that he was outdoors on Wellington Street around 11:15 p.m. without reasonable explanation when there was a directive in place that every person be indoors from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.

He was also charged with another offence which was allegedly committed last year for entering Stall No. 12 located on Fairchild Street between October 28 and 29 with intent to commit theft.

Sergeant Theodore McClean who prosecuted the curfew case said when police spotted Nicholls along Wellington Street that night he fled. He was caught and when asked for his reason for being on the road given the curfew he told them he was going to a friend’s house to sleep because his children’s mother put him out.

Nicholls told the Chief Magistrate he ran after seeing the police because, “I dun know is Covid-19 so I dun know the position I will get in.”

Nicholls who has five previous convictions, four of them the prosecutor said fell under the Theft Act, went on to explain what occurred that night.

“I was sleeping by my child mother and my phone ring which is another lady called and it turn out to be an argument. A serious argument . . . I get cut in my face, cut in my hand . . . she put me out de house. So, she put me out de house . . . I say I going in the gallery and lay down . . . she throw water on me. So, I ended having to leave to walk to go to a friend. . . to sleep. When I was walking going on there the police approach me, so I try and explain myself but police ain’t want to hear me so they decide to charge me,” he said.

Under questioning Nicholls claimed that the woman with whom he has a 13-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter was a “very jealous person”.

He added: “But it is my fault with the phone though, because I know what kind of person she is. So I should have just turned off the phone before I went to sleep.”

Asked whether the outside woman deliberately called to cause problems, Nicholls responded, “I would not say that.” He also made it clear that he had no plans of taking any legal action. “That’s my child mother at the end of the day, sir. I don’t want her charged, who will take care of the children?”

Weekes replied: “I like this one, this one is a true Bajan one. Sit down, you get punish enough.”

However, a bond imposed on Nicholls back in October 2019, for a period of one year came back to haunt him as there was an alternative of four months in prison attached if breached.

Chief Magistrate Weekes told him while he understood the mitigating factors his guilty plea had triggered the bond.

But the judicial officer said he would not add any further time to that sentence. Nicholls will now spend four months in prison for breaching the bond and was given another four months for breaking curfew. The two sentences will run concurrently.

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